As you are probably aware, gunpowder explodes. Gunpowder is made up 75% nitrate, 15% carbon and 10% sulfur. In a rocket engine, you don't want an explosion -- you would like the power released more evenly over a period of time. Therefore you might change the mix to 72% nitrate, ...
The cap ignites, shooting a small flame down a tube to the gunpowder. The gunpowder then explodes, launching the projectile out of the barrel. Introduction to Bullet Cartridges The next major innovation in the history of firearms was the bullet cartridge. Simply put, cartridges are a combination...
As the power behind bombs and missiles, chemical explosives have made possible most of the great wars of the last 1000 years or so, altering the course of history time and time again. Before the invention of gunpowder, the first chemical explosive, sometime in the first millennium, people ha...
This year, it can be with an innocent looking pumpkin pie that erupts an insane fountain of flames and fire! In fact, the pie filling is actually a flammable mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, which was made using the same process as my DIY smoke flares with fuses. ...
1687. A Venetian force led by Captain-General Francesco Morosini fired an artillery shell at Ottoman forces dug in on the Acropolis. The shell was a direct hit on the 2000-year-old temple. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Ottomans had been using the Parthenon as a gunpowder depot. Ma...
The arquebus (from a Dutch word meaning "hook gun") was a long-barreled, musket-like firearm, shot from the chest or the shoulder. The muzzle-loaded weapon with afierce recoil was ignited by a matchlock, a device that connected a smoldering wick to the gunpowder with the pull of a trig...
in from all the major arsenals in Europe. While the lack of an American design was a sign of how far the United States had fallen behind Europe in weapons development, the board decided to view the situation as an opportunity. Because all the other nations had already selected one or ...
used experts in particular areas to build his workable steamboat. Even Fulton had his setbacks, though. He first began experimenting with steamboats while living in France in the early 1800s. His first prototype broke in two and sank before a trial journey could be made in the summer of ...
“where does tea come from”. In regards to when and where people first began to consume tea, the answer is usually somewhere in Yunnan province in China. The time, some 3000-5000 years ago most likely during China’s Shang dynasty. Some records state the drink was purely medicinal until...
Poiseuille's law is sometimes referred to as the Hagen-Poiseuille law, because it was developed by a pair of researchers, French physicist Jean Leonard Marie Poiseuille and German hydraulics engineer Gotthilf Hagen, in the 1800s. According to this law, the flow rate (F) through a pipe of le...